


(fuck your) Yellow Ribbon

by cupiscent



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-14
Updated: 2007-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:34:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck's back; Nate still doesn't get it. This probably won't assist his comprehension in any way, but Chuck's beyond caring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(fuck your) Yellow Ribbon

**Author's Note:**

> Post-1x10 "Hi, Society"; this was supposed to be the hate-sex that had to happen, but I don't really know what it turned out to be.

Five minutes after Chuck closed the door to his suite, Nate was knocking on it. Five minutes. The whiskey hadn't even started to melt the ice; Chuck hadn't even taken his scarf off yet. He opened the door because he just couldn't believe it.

"The fuck," he stated. "Do you have a tracker on me?"

Nate looked pleased and sheepish and rumpled... so basic Nate, really. Weekend-morning-casual per what the women in his life thought he should wear, accessorised by Starbucks. His hair was _still_ a disaster area and Chuck was sure that it _still_ made Blair weak at the knees.

Gosh. And he'd been on a (glance at his watch) nine-minute-twenty-four-second roll of not thinking about her. Whiskey chased the sour taste out of his mouth, and he stepped away from the door enough for Nate to believe he was allowed inside. Kept retreating, thinking about a refill before he'd even emptied the glass, leaving Nate saying to his back, "Blair read it on gossipgirl, you were spotted at the airport."

Was this irony? Serena's mocking him all the way from her unspeakable Brooklyn slumming; he didn't plan to be anyone's Mark II. "Good to know I'm still worth talking about." Much more sarcasm in the words and they'd coalesce in the air. _Blair read it, Blair read it, Blairreadit._ He set his glass down by the decanter and straightened. "Don't tell me you left connubial bliss to welcome me back. I'm _touched_."

It only took one glance at Nate's face - an edge of smirk to his little-boy smile that was the cousin to the look he'd worn the last time Chuck saw him, sliding out of the Cotillion with the armful of Blair-scented silk Chuck had had marked out for adorning his own bedroom floor. One glance, and Chuck could see it all like it was laid out in front of him: bare skin and the newspaper and hand-fed grapes; a laptop, sun-soaked linen and _thou_.

He was moving before he thought about it, and when he did he didn't care to stop himself. The smile was still lingering over words Chuck hadn't heard when Nate's back hit the wall beside the door. "Hey," he said, "what?" with innocent shock painted across his face like a watercolour landscape and he'd been there this morning, been there all night, been all over her. _She'd_ been all over _him_.

Chuck pushed him back when he tried to step forward - all leverage, no strength - and leaned in. He was certain (_certain_) that he'd smell her on him, fingers twisting in the linen of his shirtsleeves, face tilted down by Nate's ear to inhale deeply.

And he could. Her perfume on his collar, sharp but still floral, and beneath that, the delicate and remembered tang of her saliva on skin. The traces of her mouth on his neck, not visible, but he knew. He _knew_.

Nate's hand on his shoulder, Nate's voice cracking over his name. "What are you doing?" he asked as Chuck leaned back, looked at him from beneath half-lowered lids, and he didn't get it. Of course. Nathaniel Archibald, absent-mindedly perfect, tousled and perplexed, completely fucking clueless as ever. Nathaniel Archibald, and Chuck loved him in all the ways he never would have a brother (a rival, a distraction, a replica) but how could she - _how could she_ \- prefer him? Nathaniel Archibald, Chuck's best friend, but whiskey and bile were curdling in his gut and he wanted to push. He wanted to _break_.

Nate yelped a little when Chuck's grip tightened, which had his mouth conveniently open when Chuck lunged in, a kiss more like an attack, an assault swarming over surprised defenses. He'd kissed enough unwilling participants to ride out the immediate objections and press his advantage, crowding Nate back against the wall. He let go of one arm, the one hampered by the half-consumed coffee anyway, and curled his hand around Nate's neck, but that was all he tasted of, his stupid Cinnamon Dolce Latte. Chuck broke off with an angry hiss, pushing his fingers up into Nate's hair to grip and yank, baring his neck so Chuck could follow that scent, the track her tongue had taken. He wanted to bite, so he did, pulling back the loose collar of Nate's shirt and pressing his teeth against exposed skin, sucking against it.

Nate _shivered_ against him, and Chuck realised that even though he had his hand free now, Nate wasn't pushing, his fingers rather pressing at Chuck's shoulder. Chuck turned his head, nose pressed beneath Nate's jaw, and breathed in again. A small sound beside his ear, and no smell now but that of his own saliva, drying under his breath. He moved away like continental drift, slow and inexorable, and it occurred to him, brushing his mouth against his best friend's chin, that he'd lost it. Or perhaps he just hadn't brought it back with him, hadn't had it in weeks, had left it somewhere in transit.

Didn't miss it.

Because it also occurred to him, leaning back far enough to see Nate's eyes again, clouded and confused and still desperately not getting it, that there was only a two-letter difference between fucking Blair, and fucking her up.

Nate's fingers were tangled in Chuck's scarf, and Chuck didn't know if it was anticipation or trepidation, just like he didn't know if the next thing out of Nate's mouth, after his name, was going to be _yes_ or _no_. Didn't give either of them time to find out, yanking him forward into another kiss, all teeth and tongues, push and pull, powered on the hate burning in his gut and the ache in what he supposed had to be referred to as his heart. He kissed Nate harder, deeper, _dirtier_ than he'd ever kissed Blair, so it was guaranteed to be exponentially harder than she'd ever kissed Nate, who stumbled, tugged at Chuck's scarf, tugged it right off.

Something warm bumped at Chuck's lower back, what _was_ it? Oh, Nate's stupid coffee. Chuck twisted enough to grab it out of Nate's grip, and felt the electric thrill of victory when the hand thus freed lifted immediately to frame his own jaw and turn his mouth back to Nate's. Chuck shuffled backwards, pulling Nate along with him, until he could feel the counter behind him and set the fucking coffee cup down on it.

"This," Nate said, breath fast in the back of his throat. "This is crazy."

"Shut up," Chuck demanded, before Nate talked sense into himself. (Never a high likelihood, but why start taking chances now?)

Nate took the hint, shoving Chuck back this time against the counter with his hand in Chuck's hair and his teeth in Chuck's bottom lip and Chuck found himself hard, pushing against Nate's hip and kissing him open-mouthed with surprise. Not the only one, it seemed; a hot, insistent, unfamiliar press against his thigh that Chuck flexed against. And Nate might flinch away, but his fingers also tightened, digging into Chuck's upper arm, so when he said, "We can't," Chuck was already saying, "We _can_," and insinuating his hand between them, curling palm and fingers.

If Blair had done the same well before now, they could have avoided most of this. But no, some girls were just so fucking fastidious.

Nate pushed against his hand, a jerk of his hips and his breath hot and fast against Chuck's neck. It took him a moment (which Chuck exploited thoroughly, stroking implacably as Nate's hands pushed unbidden up under his shirt) to pull himself together enough to say, "I- I don't know--"

"You think I _do_?" Chuck interrupted, Nate's knuckles skidding low across his juddering stomach. Nate jerked back a little, this stupid soft look of wonder on his face, and that may have been the first honest thing Chuck had said since Blair crawled into his lap and fucked him (up). Rage boiled over in his veins; he shoved Nate, following close so that when Nate almost fell over the end of the couch he was right there, pushing him down and stopping up Nate's stupid fucking mouth with his tongue. God. If Nate always made this many excuses it was no wonder Blair had got a bit desperate.

Nate wriggled beneath him on the couch, blessed writhing friction adding heat to their meeting of mouths. Nate pushed Chuck's shirt up further as Chuck rolled his eyes behind closed lids (_buttons_, Nathaniel; should've known they'd be beyond him) and went for Nate's belt buckle. One-handed unfastenings were something of a personal speciality, and he didn't allow himself even a moment of hesitation, reaching inside. It was just a dick, after all, not like it was a foreign object.

It _was_ someone else's, not familiar in his hand, but the twitch of Nate beneath him, the restlessness of his shoulders, his muttering against Chuck's mouth, all of those Chuck knew from every girl he'd ever successfully set hands on. Not so very different, except that this was Nate, the oldest, dearest, closest of Chuck's friends. Sure, he'd seen him in a variety of not precisely made-for-TV situations, but never right here, making these noises for him, _because of_ him, these noises that Chuck could lick out of his mouth. It reminded him of that night in the back of the limo, Blair in his lap and the familiar rendered so intoxicatingly unknown.

Which thought pushed him up, bracing his hand against the couch arm above Nate's head, a snap in his other wrist that made Nate arch up beneath him, his thigh easing up between Chuck's and he ground down against it - sweet _blessed_ fucking friction, a second unavoidable rhythm - before he even thought about it. His breathing was off-beat with Nate's, syncopated in the space between them. Nate had his eyes closed, Chuck noticed; his eyes closed and a line tweaking between his eyebrows with every stroke of Chuck's hand, a little aspirated sound on each breath, but his eyes closed nonetheless and Chuck wanted to wrench them open, wanted to see inside his head.

Wanted to know if he was thinking about _her_. If he was somehow deluding himself that _this_ (this hand - faster, harder, _now_ \- making him whimper) was somehow Blair's. Wondered if he could imagine it still if he fucked him. Thought about that, pushing against Nate's leg - humping it, let's be honest, no fucking finesse here, entirely not what this was about. Thought about fucking him, not his best friend, not Nathaniel Archibald, but _fucking the guy who was fucking her_.

And came, shudderingly, unsatisfyingly, his forehead on Nate's shoulder and the lingering scent of her perfume on his collar, linen against his open mouth as Nate took a hiccupy breath beside him and came over Chuck's hand and his own stomach.

Classy.

In the long boneless and sticky and awkward moment that followed, Nate's breathing didn't get appreciably slower. Chuck smirked and inhaled - her perfume, pulled under and drowned by his saliva and the thick scent of sex - and levered himself off the couch and upright. He flicked a glance over Nate as he headed towards the bathroom, but ignored the maidenly blush, the embarrassed jag of his body, for saying, "That shirt's a write-off. You have spares stashed here, right?" (He knew Nate did; he'd considered them once or twice himself, in a funk with his own wardrobe, but Nate's taste was unutterably pedestrian.)

Best not to think about his own clothes. Salvage was impossible. A tragedy; he'd liked this shirt.

He flung a damp washcloth out at the couch - Nate flinching when it landed on his chest - in between undoing buttons. He kept his own clean-up perfunctory, if complete. Tacky clothes in a pile to be disposed of, monogrammed satin bathrobe donned. He hadn't bothered closing the bathroom door, and Nate, new-shirted and decent once more, hovered into view in the mirror just as Chuck was tying the belt off. Leant against the doorframe with Nathaniel Archibald's usual talent for dissimulating, tossed the washcloth and his old shirt onto the pile of clothes, and kept his eyes on the floor.

Chuck leant against the counter, watching Nate (his best friend, the guy who was fucking her) as he said, "I didn't plan this." A tiny twitch of Nate's eyes, up and then back down; of course, he hadn't even considered that. "I'm not sorry it happened."

Nate was flailing, speechless, completely out of his depth and fumbling for words, if not air. He looked up, longer this time, with something almost accusatory in his eyes. How could Chuck have put him in this situation with which he was so manifestly unequipped to deal?

Chuck turned his head the precise amount required to both look away and still see Nate from the corner of his eye. "Don't," he said, "say anything." From this angle, there could have been anything on Nate's face: horror, heartfelt longing, that fucking leer he'd given Chuck as he fled the ball with the ill-gotten gains that should have been Chuck's. In that moment the white-hot need for violence had scorched him to the spot; the hopes he hadn't even admitted to himself immolated in a single instant, and the taste of ash lingered still. "Let's pretend it never happened," Chuck said lightly.

Because Nate had _such_ a good track-record with that ploy.

He looked back, and Nate was confused and relieved and troubled, his face always such a lamentably open book. "I should probably go," he said.

Chuck just nodded, and didn't move until the door clicked shut out in the main room.

When he came out of the bathroom, a little later, there was something buzzing insistently. Something wedged in the plush cushions of the couch, and Chuck's questing fingers found a sleek silver phone, _very_ corporate-Archibald. He flipped it over, buzzing against his palm, to show a smugly demure portrait, bare shoulder and chocolate curls and the perfect cupid's bow of her lips; above the picture the screen said, unnecessarily, _Blair_.

Chuck smeared his thumb across the screen, feeling his mouth tug and not caring if it were a sneer or a smile. He caressed the buttons of the keypad. Didn't press the 'answer' button. The phone stilled in his hand; the screen dimmed. He tossed it onto the cushion beside him.

In the whiskey glass beside the decanter, the ice had melted completely, so Chuck tipped it out and started afresh. By this time, the sun might actually be over the yardarm, but he wasn't running on American time and he didn't, actually, give a fuck.


End file.
